For nearly four years, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had been promising one transformation programme after another – government, economic, political, educational, social, etc all under an overarching slogan of 1Malaysia under one agency or another.
All these pronouncements and initiatives have achieved is to earn the nation the epithet of “The Acronym Nation” while national deformations in all aspects of national life have proceeded unchecked.
Najib’s four-year premiership will be remembered by Malaysians as an administration of plunging global indices, and this unpleasant fact has been underlined by three international reports in the last month of this year, viz:
Corruption – In the four-year Najib premiership, Malaysia’s Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) rankings sunk to the lowest depths in 18 years – No. 56 in 2009 and 2010, No. 60 in 2011 and No. 54 in 2012 as compared to the worst ranking of No. 23 under Mahathir and No. 47 under Abdullah – suggesting that corruption under the present Prime Minister is even worse than under all the previous Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein, Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah.
No. 1 in per capita capital flight : Latest Global Finance Integrity report showed that on a per capita basis, Malaysia with a population of 28 million, is No. 1 in the world on illicit money outflow – whether in terms of black money siphoned out of the country for 2010, which is RM196.8 billion, or for the past decade (2000-2010), which is a whopping RM871 billion or equivalent to over RM31,000 for each of the country’s 28 million population.
Double-whammy of decline in maths and science standards by Malaysian students when compared with foreign countries well as with past batches – In TIMSS 2011 for eighth-grade students, Malaysia is ranked No. 26 with a score of 440 out of 1,000 for mathematics and even lower for science at No. 32 with a score of 426, both below the international average. They are also the worst scores for Malaysia in the four TIMSS 1999-2011, i.e. in maths dropping by 79 points from 519 in 1999 to 440 in 2011; in science, dropping by 66 points from 492 in 1999 to 426 points in 2011.
These are not signs of national transformation but national deformations.
Let 2013 end the national deformations and usher in an era of genuine national transformation for Malaysians by electing a new Pakatan Rakyat Malaysian government for the first time in 55 years.
Happy New Year 2013 to all Malaysians.
(2013 New Year Message in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, 31st December 2012)